17 January 2015

You know when it’s Davos time when your friends and colleagues on Twitter drop the “D” word, and when on January 20th your twitter feed gets inundated by pictures of a cute red train trolling through the foothills of Switzerland as participants make the annual pilgrimage to the small Swiss village. If you are not part of the lucky few, you can still follow the event from the comfort of your home or office. Here is a primer on the how and where. I will update regularly as more information is released.

Before the meeting

This year’s theme "The New Global Context" is split into four pillars: Crisis & Cooperation, Growth and Stability, Innovation and Industry and Society and Security. Those will drive the conversations and panels.

Your first step to prepare and time when you want to tune in, is to access the official program here.

You might also want to read some of the blog posts written by speakers here.

Reports by the World Economic Forum are available for downloads ( #pdftribute !) in Scribd here.

The organization offers also a dashboard, with Facebook, Youtube and Twitter on one page, which I find handy: click here

During the meeting

Listen - real time

The full programme, webcast sessions, curated social media comments from participants and the global public, photos and other session-related content will be accessible from the event page: http://wef.ch/am15.

In my mind, the best synthesis is still to be provided by KPMG: The World Economic Forum Live site has been launched and the countdown has started. WEFLIVE is an interactive social media aggregation and data visualization service that analyzes the conversations emanating from world business, political and civil leaders in Davos, as well as what the world is saying in response. KPMG is telling me that this year's improvements include:

• Moments: WEFLIVE 2015 will provide a deeper analysis of the aggregated data, giving users a better understanding of what’s taking place on the ground in Davos. For instance, users will be able to select different moments of the day from an interactive timeline. When selecting a particular moment, the entire site will update dynamically to reflect that point in time, including visuals and a written analysis summarizing key data points.

• Replay the day: Users will have the option to replay the day on WEFLIVE. At the click of a button, the site will display the dynamically changing stats, visualizations, and written analyses, from different points throughout the day.

• WEFLIVE stories: WEFLIVE stories is the most significant enhancement yet. This feature will allow users to build, customize and create a WEF story of their choice, with the option to embed it on their own website or blog. When creating the story, users will be able to select different WEFLIVE visualizations throughout the site, (i.e., including live infographics), and add their own commentary.

For those of you who did not get an invitation to the World Economic event in Davos in person, there is an Open Forum, open to all. In my experience, there are great sessions shared there, and very lively conversations. You can also access the program here: http://www.openforumdavos.ch/en/open-forum-2015.html

Watch

Many pictures are shared from the event, some official, many shared by the participants. Here is a guide:

The quickest access to pictures is to view dozens of pictures uploaded in real time to Flickr by the WEF ( http://wef.ch/am15pix) or here ( on Flickr).

A selection of the best pictures taken at the Annual Meeting will be made available free of charge under the creative commons licence.

The World Economic Forum’s webcast widget is fully embeddable. The full programme, individual sessions, and session information are all available as customisable modules which can be embedded individually or in combination. For full details, technical specs and embed codes: http://wef.ch/embed ( source: the World Economic Forum)

Participate

You can follow discussions from attendees on most social media platforms:

Twitter:

There is a lot going on Twitter during Davos and it is often fascinating to follow the live stream, and listen to participants comments on Twitter at the same time. Official lists include:

You can submit your questions on twitter using the official hastag or one of the 10 Global Challenges hashtags ( my intuition is that those will not get used much – it is easier to stick with official one #WEF15 :

You can follow the The World Economic Forum on Twitter @Davos as well as the live tweet account @WEF where key quotes get tweeted from official plenary sessions. Although organizers are trying to suggest that the official hashtag is #WEF15, I suspect that your magic word on twitter is #WEF , the hashtag used by all participants at the event ( with a word of caution - #WEF is also used by the World Equestrian Festival, which is taking place as I am writting this, which always leads to some interesting quiproquos...). I will follow and share what strikes my interest on Competia's twitter account.

Make sure you follow also the communities: @GlobalShapers ( Young Global Shapers) @TechPioneers ( Technology Pioneers), @SchwabFound (Social Entrepreneurs) and @YGLVoices ( Young Global Leaders) These sub-communities often have a specific program, and tweets can be a great complement to the ones stemming from the official program. In particular, I encourage you to follow closely the list of this year’s technology pioneers ( as well as alumni) for technology related discussions: https://twitter.com/techpioneers/lists/tp2015 .

Facebook:

Facebook is always very busy. You can either get the official feed from the WEF's page ( here) or join a discussion group ( currently over 4,000 members) here

For Spanish speakers, you can also follow our Foro Económico Mundial Facebook page for content from our Spanish blog.

Feel free to create your playlist of participants of interest. Those listed below tend to talk about what they hear, and ideas getting moved. I will add more names to that list as I can judge who will be active in sharing what they learn.

Did I miss anything ? Are you blogging about the event ? use the comments to add and refine this short article.